His brother died at 16. Five years later, they walked the stage together

TAMPA, Fla. -- Dozens of graduates and parents stopped Lawson Boeth on his way into the Florida State Fairgrounds, asking why the soon-to-be Newsome High School graduate already had his diploma in hand before the ceremony.

He didn’t have much time to stop and explain. It wasn’t his: It was for his brother Walter, who died in 2020 at 16.

“If he was alive, I would never do anything nice for him,” he quipped, joking that he wondered if his brother would have even graduated.

But as Lawson crossed the stage last month, he teared up holding his diploma, as well as a posthumous diploma for his brother.

Lawson didn’t like crying, he said. He spent two straight weeks doing that after Walter died. Instead, he wanted to remember his brother in positive ways.

And he and his mom have been doing whatever they can to talk about the fentanyl epidemic.

‘That was brotherhood’

Walter and Lawson Boeth grew up in the FishHawk Ranch subdivision. They were 3½ years apart, and they would fish and play soccer together. Walter was fiercely protective of Lawson, their mom, Anita Birchmeier, remembered.

Lawson said Walter didn’t care much for school but was still recognized for his smarts. He was a middle school science fair winner and a popular soccer goalie. His friends said he had “a personality that could rule a nation,” according to his mother, and called him a “living vibe check” who was only happy after making sure everyone else was.

Music was a big part of Walter’s life. When Walter and Lawson’s parents divorced, the boys and their mom would play DJ while driving in the car. Their taste evolved from Justin Bieber to rappers like Juice WRLD and Lil Peep.

Days before Walter died, Lawson remembered lying in bed and hearing his brother singing off-key in the shower, intentionally. Lawson burst into laughter and sang along. A few moments later, they were arguing. Again. That was brotherhood, Lawson said.

“A lot of people take their brothers or their siblings for granted, and they argue all the time, just like me and my brother did,” Lawson said. “Brotherhood is that under all the punching and hitting and cussing out and all that, that you would do anything for each other.”

Now, those same lyrics from the shower haunt Birchmeier. They were filled with pain and references to pills.

Walter was a good kid, Birchmeier said. After a couple of concussions, he struggled with anxiety and depression. He made a connection with a therapist, but when the pandemic started, he wasn’t able to go in person.

One evening, Birchmeier later found out, he told a friend he wanted to sleep. She learned he ordered a couple of Percocet pills through Snapchat, which Birchmeier now calls the “Uber Eats of pills.”

“This kid delivered it to my house,” she said. “I was home.”

The next morning, she found him dead.

Birchemeier said some called it an overdose. She calls it fentanyl poisoning.

“He didn’t know what he was taking,” she said. “He didn’t mean to die. He was starting a job the next day. He had a girlfriend he loved. He was doing well, but he was in that isolation of COVID.”

It’s readily available in parking lots or on social media, she said. The medical examiner told her he’d seen more fentanyl deaths than COVID deaths, she said.

She goes up to strangers and tells them not to take pills. She’s joined Facebook groups.

She doesn’t want it to be political; she just wants people to know what the drug could do.

She’d heard of fentanyl and the opioid crisis, but it seemed remote — for people who abused drugs.

“I had no idea that it would touch us.”

Lawson, who was 13, had never heard of it.

Finding purpose, charting a path

Lawson is the rock of his friend group. He’s his mom’s rock, too. Sometimes on days when she finds no strength, she turns to him. He’ll squeeze her hands and remind her: “We got this.”

After his brother died, he discovered he, like his brother, wanted to make people happy. He wanted to tend to his parents to make sure they were OK.

It was his freshman year of high school. Lawson began wearing 20 — his brother’s soccer number. Walter died on September 20, 2020, and 20 felt like a special number. Birchmeier, who hated tattoos and swore she’d never get one, tattooed the number on her inner wrist.

Sometimes they felt they got signs from Walter.

They’d see the number 20 in random places. A feather would consistently turn up on soccer fields that Lawson would tuck into a sock and bring to his mom after a game.

People often ask them how they do it, how they find the strength to endure.

“They say it’s the worst thing in the whole entire world to lose your child,” Birchmeier said. “And it is.”

Some days she cries. Other days, she spends time with her dad on his boat, or has dinner with Lawson, or travels with friends and then questions if something is wrong with her that she’s able to.

Sharing a message that could save other lives helps her find purpose, she said.

As Lawson considers his own path, exploring options in entrepreneurship and starting businesses, he hopes to carry forward much of what his brother taught him. He’s starting with a window cleaning company.

“It’s our gift to live the things that he wanted to be through us, and that he never got the ability to,” he said. “You know, be extremely happy or not be anxious all the time, or not be depressed the whole time, or even not get to walk across the stage with his diploma. Our gift is living those things through us.”

It’s why Lawson, who asked his school if they’d award his brother a posthumous diploma, tells his mom to be happy.

Because that’s what Walter would want.